will the day come when?

Many insightful and compelling thoughts above -- well done. CD's will
become a fringe audiophile/ecclectic thing like vinyl is now. All but a handful
of the audiophile grade CD recordings will gradually become worthless accept
to a fringe minority (us).

I converted my digital front-end to a computer music server (lossless files)
over two years ago. I still have only downloaded a handfull of albums because
they come in a compressed format (AAC on iTunes). When CD quality
downloads become more common I will move in that direction. That said, I
have a second computer that has my lossless collection in AAC for my iPod.

CD is fast becoming an audiophile format -- strange isn't it?

Excellent Elizabeth - a truly cheery outlook. It perhaps will finally be the brave new world so with a steady ration of soma I am not sure I will care.

To Pardales point - an interesting experiment has begun. EMI has relaxed the DRM rules on the iTune store. For a modest premium you can download your song in higher quality with fewer restrictions on its use. The million dollar question in my mind is 1) what percentage of total downloads will be in the better. freer format and 2) will people be paying for the increased flexibility or the improved quality...

I won't hazard a guess as to when CDs will completely disappear (probably never) but I do expect them to give way to electronic distribution. We're almost ready to see movies distributed this way but network bandwidth is restricting that market right now.

Here's what I WISH would happen with music distribution and this assumes we can overcome the DRM issues. Music labels could store the originals in a suitable hi rez format and allow buyers to pick the format and resolution they wanted to download. The product could then be sent in full resolution or converted and downsampled on the fly to the selected format and resolution. The fly in this ointment (so to speak) is what will be the incentive for labels to put the time into producing well recorded product if most buyers are downloading at a resolution that won't show the advantage of the extra time and effort.

I must admit that the Sonos controller looks really cool and intrigues me. I get really tired of putting on glasses so I can squint at the track list (usually printed in gray on black or some other idiotic combination) on a new CD to figure out what song is playing. They're also going to have to figure out how to distribute albums that have no gaps between tracks (e.g., live albums and some classical) - that's very irritating (at least to me). EAC-type image rips to wav with associated .cue files are one way to get around this.

Note that I see this as different than the change from vinyl to CD. That was a fundamental change in the way that music was recorded and the carrier that it was distributed on. The change from CD/SACD/DVD-A to hard drive is much less dramatic. Essentially the data stays the same, it's just distributed differently.

Note also that I still listen to LPs and don't expect this will change. Whether I rip my CDs and switch to electronic distribution will probably be determined by whether the industry can overcome the shortcomings I mentioned above.

Dick

I wonder about the cd question all the time.

Even the CD format now isn’t used to its fullest extent. I listen to a lot of reggae on cd and 99% of the CDs sound like garbage compared to something like Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Fox Trot (from a recording and production stand point). Most of the CDs in my collection have large variations in their sound quality. Until all popular music it being recorded in a fashion that is fully utilizing the technologies that is already available I don’t think there is any sense in even considering changing from CDs.

As far as every thing going to the internet, that is doubtful there are still a lot of people without broad band , cable modem etc. and without that you cant be buying music online.